Today we'll be treated to first an Odyssey briefing and then a Spirit briefing. A couple of e-mails and comments at the blog have pointed to articles online that are suggesting contact with Spirit has been improved some and the engineers are optimistic. I'll get the notes up as soon as the briefings are concluded.
I'll post the first brief here and create a new post for the Spirit briefing.
9 am Odyssey brief (first draft, recorded briefing successfully so I may add to it this evening if I have the time):
Natalie Godwin: (media relations) 2 communication passes with Spirit and we have received data. Team still analyzing that data. Latest information on Spirit at 10am. Tomorrow night, however, Sprit's twin, Odyssey, lands on Mars. Here to talk about that.
Jim Garvin: What a time in the history of Mars exploration. More vehicles exploring Mars now than ever. here at NASA we have a program guided by science. Joy and Ray to talk about science we aim to do. Advantage of having a program is different tools in different vantage points. Slide showing Odyssey, Mars Express, MERs, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix, and Mars Telesat orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory. (some brief description of the upcoming missions). Can we follow the record of the water to the record of the building blocks of life. Having 2 MERs doubles the science. Organized a process whereby hundreds of scientists had input to determine the best science we could do with Spirit and Opportunity. We ended up with two sites. You've heard about Gusev, let's hear about Meridiani.
Joy Crisp: Meridiani on the opposite side of the planet. We're going to be splitting the tactical operations team in half. They'll be working different halves of the day. (slide showing work shifts). These folks are working on Mars time so they'll come to work 39.5 minutes later each day. People won't just stick with one rover the whole time but also won't be shifting frequently because of the 12 hour jet lag. Meridiani safe and can meet science objectives. Meridiani has evidence for past liquid water in minerals, gray hematite, detected by TES on MGS. (shows a piece of gray hematite). Typically created in the presence of liquid water. Was that past environment favorable for life. Flyover animation of the Meridiani site made by THEMIS team (Odyssey). Some data came from MOC, MLA, and TES from MGS as well. Targeted to land somewhere inside the 45mi long oval in some of Mars's smoothest terrain. Colors are where TES has mapped gray hematite from orbit.
Ray Arvidson: I'm really excited for Saturday night. Within a sol or two we'll have some images from the surface in an area that scientists have been focused on for some years. Slide showing THEMIS data and colors represent concentration of hematite. 15-20% by weight in the red. When we're down on the surface and doing imaging in color, emission spectroscopy with mini-TES, into the soil with Mossbauer spectroscopy that gets you the iron, do chemistry with APXS and closeup and personal images with MI. Getting at, first of all, is it gray hematite. We're all pretty certain that hematite like this is on the surface. Then we want to find out what is the geologic origin of this material. What you're looking at is a map that covers a large area of real estate. That line that crosses across the bottom is a geologic cross section. That red area is determined to be gray hematite bearing material is on the top of a 2-300 meter sedimentary deposit. This slide, huge vertical exaggeration shows the hematite on the top of those layers. That green unit is eroded in places to show the crater underneath. Hematite sitting on massive deposit of sediments. Is this volcanic or a thick stratum produced in an ancient ocean. We don't know but we'll be on the surface Saturday night and within a few sols we'll be getting data that will tell us. Other minerals, landforms, microscopic imager will try to tell us through grain sizes, textures, crossbeds, things like that will start to tell us. Last slide is a view of the most likely landing site. Left is a MOC narrow angle image. You can see craters that have excavated through hematite deposits. We expect we'll see the material that carries the hematite and underlying materials. Combination of Pancam, mini-TES, MI, we'll get the kind of data we need to test the two hypothesis, marine or volcanic. Complimentary to Gusev. Gusev called to us because of its morphology. Meridiani called to us because of its minerology. Saturday night's going to be pretty exciting.
Natalie: please only questions about Opportunity.
Q. Joy, will instruments be able to determine whether it's marine or volcanic.
Joy: we have a pretty good set of instruments. Mossbauer can look at iron bearing minerals. We've got mini-TES, and we're in an area with a low amount of dust so it can see more of rock component but you can't know until you get there.
Ray: mission of exploration and discovery so can't predict but I can't imagine a better payload.
Q. How much added pressure because of problems with Spirit. Is this mission more critical if Spirit continues to have problems.
Jim: we're here addressing science of Odyssey.
Joy: pressure can't go up. For every mission, it's as high as it could be.
Jim: 3 and half years ago decision was made to send 2. We're aware of stress, risk, challenges.
Q. More description of how you tell the difference between marine and volcanic.
Ray: how we're going to use the payload and mobility. We'll survey the terrain with the Pancam octants, in color and infra-red, followed up with a full mini-TESS that will get at minerology and landforms. Then we'll figure out where we're going to egress. First thing then will be Pancam, mini-TES, APXS and Mossbauer to determine if we have this mineral. Verified hematite then what are the minerals associated with the hematite. Then MI is going to provide textural information, seeing things as small as 1/10mm across. Looking for evidence of sediments, crossbeds that may have come from waves and currents. Also looking at landforms, looking for vents. The hematite had to come from somewhere and we're gonna use the landforms, textures, crossbeds, layering, particle size and shape, chemistry and associated minerals. I can't give you a blow by blow description of the activities of any one sol because it's a mission of exploration.
Q. You would expect to find hematite in both situations?
Ray: we'd be blown away if we didn't find hematite because the measurements are so strong.
Q. Are you planning to tweak the software on Opportunity based on Spirit? For the embedded software on the rover?
Jim: We're using information we have from MGS, the engineering experience from Spirit EDL, we are integrated.
Joy: good question for next panel. They're going to be extra careful with second rover and learn from the first one. That is an option we have. We can go slower, we can patch software. No decisions have been made yet.
Q: given the recency of the discovery of hematite, how important was that.
Ray: outcrop is special, right on the equator. There's hematite distributed across the surface in low concentrations but this area is an enormous amount of hematite covering an area the size of Oklahoma. Why hematite and not other iron oxides. This was a major discovery telling us something about the evolution of the planet.
Jim: One of the beauties is that we have a program. MGS' discovery finds this, a rover can investigate and then we have Mars Reconnaissance.
Ray: it's not only the hematite, it's the hematite in combinations with the sedimentary deposit underneath it.
Q. Is it gonna look even alien to Mars?
Ray: some of the payload teams have a lottery. We kind of had a good feeling for what Gusev looked like. We expect this surface to look unlike Gusev, Pathfinder, Viking. Big plated structures, shiny outcroppings of hematite, we're really looking forward to Saturday night.
Q. Ray, could you explain implications of a volcanic origins of water? Hydrothermal vents?
Ray: Has water been on the surface for long periods in form of lakes, rivers, or has it mostly been under the surface. Water is corrosive especially when hot moving under the surface and can leave hematite. We're getting at was this standing water or heated ground water. Fundamental in terms of getting the real Mars to stand up for this particular area. Layered deposits could be wind-blown and hematite from sub-surface hot water. Equally likely that we're looking at sediments at the bottom of an ancient ocean. I do think we'll know in a few weeks.
Q. Ray, you said you've never seen anything like this on Earth. Where's largest formation on Earth.
Ray: Hematite occurrences on earth included direct emplacement from volcanism. You can get hematite in igneous materials. Much more limited. You can also get it formed in pre-Cambrian period in layered sedimentary rocks in shallow seas. Tens of square km of layered deposits. Also a ubiquitous weathering in soils if you don't get to wet. Can't be Earth-chauvinistic.
Q. Could you run through minimum science criteria to call this mission a success. Where is Spirit in that stage.
Joy: I don't have all those numbers but easy to remember are that we need one of these rovers to work. For one rover to work and operate for 90 sols. We needed to get full 360 stereo Pancam panorama and we did that for Spirit. Science team wanted to get mini-TES panorama but NASA didn't require that. We wanted to RAT but not requirement from NASA.
Jim: We required the missions to be able before egressing to collect contingency science. Spirit has done that. That was the science floor.
Joy: driving distance, 600 meters by both rovers. 8 locations visited by both rovers for success.
Q. Should Opportunity land perfectly might you unfold it, roll it out and get it going at a different rate than Spirit.
Jim: Lots of discussion going on right now. A lot of choices and decisions to be made. Team's looking at how to use Opportunity. Stay tuned.
Joy: they haven't changed anything yet. That is an option and it makes sense to learn from Spirit.
Jim: we separated landings to allow for this and we have a lot of flexibility in the systems.
Q. Anything from the Mars Express discovery of water vapor that changes science you're doing on Mars.
Jim: we've known about water since Mariner 9 and Viking. Looking at the nature of water and detecting it has been part of the Mars plan for a generation. New ways of looking at that is not unexpected. We're looking at the water at the rock and soil scale. Mars Express is wonderful results.
Ray: payload on Mars Express is a phenomenally good set of instruments and complimentary to what we're doing. The Sol 13 cooperative effort with Spirit and ME was a success. We have lots of data from that. There are also joint projects between ME and Odyssey and ME and MGS. Lots of contact between Europe and us.
Q. How the teams are being split? How many on the two teams? Elaborate on the challenges of operating two crafts on opposite sides of planet.
Joy: main challenge is 12 hours apart. We have approx 150 people. We'll have approx. 75 on each team. Up till now they've been on the same team getting educated. We'll have more room. Crossing between the two teams is a strategic teams linking up with the two tactical teams to coordinate plans, budgets, orbital assets. We also have leads in science and engineering crossing over. Crossover meetings. meetings at odd times because they're set on Mars local time.
Natalie: we'll replay images following brief. stay tuned for Spirit briefing at 10am.
Q. Will you see hematite as veins on surface? Will you see fissures and openings in the surface?
Ray: the answer is "yes." We don't know what we'll find but one can imagine a scenario where we're driving along and we see a discolored bed from where steam has come up. We'll be looking for fractured openings, vents, etc. On the other hand, if we find vast layered deposits and we go to a crater and see crossbeds and rounded and piled stones like you'd find in lakebeds on earth. We'll be using all the data that we get from all the instruments will go into testing the hypothesis. (ed. Ray just talks too fast for my typing, sorry for missing so much here). Mobility system so critical to the success of this mission.
*End of briefing*
Posted by asa at January 23, 2004 08:57 AM